Ted Roark
|actor= Chevy Chase |status= Deceased |seasons= Season 2 }} to Stephen}} Theodore "Ted" Roark was born on January 23, 1949 in New York, NY. He is the founder and CEO of Roark Instruments and is the arch-nemesis of Stephen Bartowski. There is some evidence that Ted is a head of Fulcrum. He served as the primary antagonist of Season 2. He is credited with creating some of the most successful computer technologies. Despite operating successfully in the United States, his firm has been implicated in several suspect technology transfer deals. He has been under CIA surveillance for at least 18 months. He is secretly in charge of creating the new Intersect for Fulcrum. At the end of , he captures Chuck and his father, Stephen, now revealed as Orion, and forces Stephen to help him finish the Intersect. Roark reappears in "Chuck Versus the Colonel". He gives Stephen until the next morning to finish the Intersect, threatening to kill his family. Stephen covertly double-crosses him and reprograms the computer to, instead, remove the Intersect from Chuck's head. When Roark tries to use it to program a number of Fulcrum agents with the Intersect. Roark discovers the deception when he fails to flash on any of his test data. After General Beckman's airstrike begins, Roark flees and is assumed to be dead when a bomb detonates near him while trying to get to cover, but the end of the episode reveals he survived the attack and plans to disrupt Ellie's wedding. In "Chuck Versus the Ring", Roark threatens to kill Ellie if Chuck does not turn over the Intersect cube, the central component of Roark's Intersect, however, he is thwarted by Chuck, Stephen, Sarah Walker, Bryce Larkin, and a special forces team led by Colonel John Casey. Roark is arrested and detained in a cell in Castle. He is later executed by a member of Casey's team who is revealed to be a member of a mysterious espionage conglomerate known as the Ring. It is noted that Roark's Intersect cube is differently designed than other Intersect versions. Many of the previous Intersect designs have required the Cipher, rather than a large cube confined within a tube. His Intersect was later tweaked by the CIA and the NSA, where it became the Intersect 2.0, used through the entirety of Season Three and Season Four. Creation Roark is a caricature of software industry leaders such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and his name may be inspired by Howard Roark from The Fountainhead. He is portrayed by Chevy Chase as self-important and narcissistic, but highly charismatic. Early in "Chuck Versus the Dream Job", Stephen tells Chuck that he and Roark were once partners and graduate school classmates, but Roark stole many of his (Stephen's) ideas and presented them as his own. Similar accusations have also been made about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. The episode revealed few other details about the relationship between Roark and Bartowski, Senior. Nerd Notes It is entirely feasible that he was named for the character of Mr Roark (Ricardo Montalban) who was the host of Fantasy Island in the television of the same name. He offered Chuck the dream job he'd always aspired to, and it fell out in a completely unexpected way. Category:Characters Category:Deceased Characters Category:Fulcrum and Ring Agents Category:Male Category:Scientist Category:Season Primary Antagonists